


must have been some magic

by dinosaur



Series: 10 Days of Ficletmas [7]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Rubber Ducks, Ugly Holiday Sweaters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:12:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2845706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinosaur/pseuds/dinosaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Mate, you've outdone even me." Zayn says, scratchy with smoke.</p>
<p>Niall's muscles untense a bit. It takes a good person to recognize when someone's outdone your bid for ugly holiday jumper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	must have been some magic

**Author's Note:**

> amalgamated from [tumblr](http://imlikenah.tumblr.com/tagged/10dof). on a fateful day in early december i had an Intense Reaction to [this au post](http://imlikenah.tumblr.com/post/104209923365/captainasexual-fun-holiday-aus-for-you-to). and my inevitable downfall into the 10 Days of Ficletmas was decided.
> 
> so, on the seventh day of christmas, i gave to you,  
> ziall: we both wore ugly sweaters to this christmas party because the invitation didn’t say it’s formal au
> 
> title from frosty the snowman bc tbh yeah

Harry answers the door in a maroon suit.

Niall looks him over three times just to make sure. Then, he turns on his heel and starts to walk back down the hallway. He only gets four steps before there's a sharp tug hauling him back.

He keeps walking forward. Determination has always served him well.

"Niall. Ni, you'll rip your jumper c'mon." Harry says, whiny at the edges.

"Well, Harold it won't make that much of a difference because it's already the ugliest jumper in the world, in case you haven't noticed, you maroon addled arsehole." Niall can hear his stitching complaining.

"Hey." Harry says.

"No." Niall says.

"I'm sorry?" Harry asks.

"You're really sorry," Niall corrects. "And I'm going home to be with my jumper alone."

Harry comes around to cup Niall's face in his overly large, orange-smelling hands. Niall wrinkles his nose and doesn't ask.

"Just for an hour, please. There's so many people and my knock knock jokes can only go so far, please please."

There's a jittery sort of discomfort lining the foundation'd edges of Harry's face. Sometimes, Niall wonders if Harry even recognizes that he does this. Tries to fill things fit to bursting so he can ignore his own glass instead to deal with the overflow of someone else's.

Niall sighs heavily and leans his head into Harry's hand. Harry gives him a small rueful smile, like I know and thank you and I'm working on it all at once. 

"It is a really ugly jumper." Harry appeases.

"Thank you, Harry." Niall says primly, lets his Harry-reflex smile go unchecked.

They go inside and Niall keeps it firmly pressed on his face like it's his own maroon jacket.

The party is a mess. Glasses and strange triangles of too little food everywhere and rich socialites whose job is partying. Last week, Niall ate tacos 4 times. He sighs and lets go of Harry's arm to make rounds on the opposite end of the room.

He's fine with the people, it's just them and their class system and whole range of moral values he struggles with. That, and the fact that his jumper is getting more than a few laughs, which is fine, honest, it just makes his stomach and spine shake distractingly.

He keeps his fingers pressed into his trouser pockets. If he concentrates hard, it's almost like he can hear Liam's voice telling him he can do it, no biting required, he's sure of it.

Laughing off a question about his marital status from someone in a leopard ball gown, Harry fucking owes him, he manages to escape to the west wing of the house. There's too much space, Niall's always thought so.

But right now, now it's good. His breathing begins to level out as he trails his fingers along the frames of him and Harry, Harry and some old guy, Harry and Gemma, Gemma and Anne, Harry and Zayn.

Niall nudges open the single bathroom and comes face to face with actual Zayn. He blinks.

The room's in a state. The cloying smell of weed burns hot, even with the vent on and the window propped. There are towels on the floor, pushed along with the door. And perched on the edge of the tub is Zayn, blunt in mouth, sharpie in one hand and a rubber duckie in the other. He looks up at Niall like he's not sure if he isn't seeing his mum in the doorway.

They stare at each other for a moment. 

Niall knows Zayn in that vague, awed, adoring kind of way that anyone who knows Harry knows Zayn. But he doesn't know if letting free the laughter building in his chest is something that will be met with scorn or defensiveness, when really it's just relief. Zayn's jumper is an atrocious version of a badly wrapped snowman present, all red and gold and ugly.

"Mate, you've outdone even me." Zayn says, scratchy with smoke.

Niall's muscles untense a bit. It takes a good person to recognize when someone's outdone your bid for ugly holiday jumper.

He grins winningly, puts full power behind it, as he slides into the bathroom. When he nods down at the door in question, Zayn's eyes slide up from somewhere in the vicinity of Niall's mouth and he nods back. Niall flushes and kicks the door shut, resets the towel blockade.

Mindful of the last time he tried to sit down on this floor and nearly managed to give himself a concussion, he uses the toilet bowl to help settle down on the floor in front of Zayn. Who gives him a small nod like he knows why.

For a moment, they just sit there. The sharpie makes squeaky circles along the duck's eye, turning it steadily from boring to pirate. Niall wraps his arms around his legs, grins into them.

Eventually, the duck has a patch, a sword, a waistcoat and a tiny bottle of rum. Zayn's hands are gentle and self-assured. His style is loopy and fun. Niall wonders how it would look mixed with his own handwriting and flushes a bit.

Zayn sets the duckie back in it's spot on the ledge and reaches for a new one.

"So." he says. "Haz." He waves the sharpie around in a vague annoyed gesture that somehow encompasses all the annoyance Niall feels with Harry's vagueness.

"Haz." Niall agrees.

"Just couldn't do it. Promised I'd stick it out for an an hour but I never said I'd stick it out, out there." The duckie gives a particularly loud squeak.

"People out there talking about their 4th mortgage and the value of Aunt Bertha's estate, who's not even dead yet. I'd say you were the smarter of the fruits, here." Niall says, shrugging his shoulders.

Zayn looks up at him through impossible eyelashes and Niall resists the urge to swallow.

"Smarter of the fruits?" Zayn asks, lips curling distractingly.

"Yeah." Niall says, and then realizes - "Oh. Shit, sorry, it's a thing Harry and Liam do, debate the qualities of fruits." he flutters a hand about to represent the whole ridiculous thing.

Zayn laughs like a speech bubble. Niall's thought for a while Zayn can't be merely human. Meeting him isn't disproving his theory at all.

"Naw, I know. the worst part isn't like even hearing Harry mumble about tangerines at 4 am." Zayn says, sighing while he adds a flower to the duckie's new hair. "It's that they're all so wrong."

"I know." Niall just about punches the air. "Like literally on which planet would banana be the coolest fruit."

"Right, like." Zayn's shakes his head.

When he glances up again, looking so disgusted, Niall can't help it. He laughs into his own knees, feels the remaining tension from this whole bloody evening seeping out. Zayn speech bubble laughs again. Niall quiets down just to listen.

When they've both calmed down a bit, Zayn offers him the blunt he's been holding in his hand for a while.

"No pressure." he says, with it.

Niall takes it carefully, recognizing the gesture for what it is.

They pass it back and forth a bit, toking unrushed and easy. Two more duckies get painted while they sit. The bathroom smells unmistakable now, but it's not like Harry is gonna be bothered and everyone else is too wrapped up in complimenting each others' pristine white collared button downs to wander back here.

Eventually Niall has to ask. "How many of those did Harry buy anyway, fucking hell."

"This' the last."

"Whatchu gonna draw on after that, then? The walls?" It's kind a pleasing thought. Maybe Zayn could draw their ugly jumper designs, really teach Harry about the value of printed invitations with dress codes.

Zayn hums a non-comment, then says, "You." like it's nothing, like it doesn't make Niall think yes louder than he thought no earlier to Harry.

"Okay." Niall says, and waits for Zayn to look at him, eyes dark with a prickling intensity, before he offers up his arm to Zayn from where he's sitting. It reaches, but Zayn has to hold it down on his thigh. They watch each other for a moment, before Zayn curls back down to press the sharpie across Niall's arm. The ink looks bold and important against the stark paleness of his skin.

Niall holds very still, even while the pen tickles. There's a lot of strokes that Niall doesn't try to keep track off. Instead he watches the way Zayn's neck flexes with each breath. Zayn has to tap his hand to get him to realize he's done. Niall looks down.

And immediately feels his heart beat kick up a notch from low level aroused and high to extreme level please kiss me all the time and maybe make some waffles with me too.

Zayn's drawn them as each others' jumper characters. Rudolph for Zayn, Frosty for Niall. It's cute and precious and Niall is fiercely glad it's been done in permanent ink.

But most of all he's glad he came to Harold's party after all and wandered down the hallway and into this room because underneath Zayn's written his number. Niall bites his own lip against the pleasure it all sends skipping down his spine.

Zayn turns his hand carefully, folds fingers tight around his wrist. Then, he gracefully drops to his knees in front of Niall, nearly nose to nose. Niall's beginning to breathe unsteady.

He smells incredible and this close his eyes look like they're shaded by fans not eyelashes. His stubble looks like it would hurt. Niall fights with his eyelids to not close, to not imagine what it would feel like against his chin, his chest, the line of his hip.

Lips curling up like he knows what Niall's thinking, Zayn presses slowly forward and Niall drops back without thinking. Luckily, he hits the folded up towels and not the cabinet, but he winces anyway.

Laughter in his eyes, now, Zayn leans down over him, braces one arm beside him and raises their joined hands. Niall's hand is pushed flat back against the tile. Their hips are centimeters away from centimeters of fabric touching.

"Better keep it exposed like, wouldn't want it to smear before drying, yunno." Zayn says, low and overly intimate.

Niall's eyes flutter closed against his will. He imagines. Vividly.

When he manages to wrench them open, Zayn is still in the same spot, smug and soft in his awful wonderful jumper. Niall wants to kiss him so bad his jaw aches.

Zayn beats him to it.

He watches Niall carefully as he leans in closer, pauses with barely any space left between them at all, breathing each others' breaths.

"Please," Niall whispers, can't seem to get his voice to go louder.

Zayn obliges.

Harry finds them, or rather, trips over them 3 hours later as they start in on the last blunt Zayn has. They're still wearing their jumpers. They're not still wearing pants.

Harry frowns at them loudly and then crosses his arms.

"I can't believe you would leave me for each other and draw on my duckies." He says. Niall and Zayn look at each other and then back at Harry. "And not make a single one of them a cowboy. I am disowning you both."

He slams the door behind him.


End file.
